A few limping steps brought him inside, into the gentler light projected from the ceiling. He stopped, stared up at the pale colors of the nebula, and forced himself to breathe slowly.
The door irised open at his approach. An alert and concerned‑looking guard met him, setting aside the datapad she was reading to rise from her bench. “Miss Katherinessen?”
“Why wasn’t I informed?” he snarled. She stepped back, arms crossed, and he sighed and modulated his tone. “I’m sorry,” he said, through the taste of gall. “I need to speak to Elder Pretoria immediately.”
“I’ll see what I can do. If you’ll return to your room…”
“No. I’m going with you.”
She stared, but he refused to glance down. She wasn’t wearing a weapon, unlike most women, and he was glad. Otherwise, he thought she might shoot him if he stepped any closer. At least he had height and age on her. He lifted his chin and folded his arms, feeling like the heroine in a Victorian drama.
Her arms dropped to her sides. “This way.”
He followed meekly, rubbing grit from the corners of his eyes. He was notlosing Michelangelo. Not with long‑elusive dreams about to settle on his hand like butterflies. War, revolution, treason–these seemed minor considerations now.
He almost didn’t recognize the emotion. It was hope. And it was also hope settling into his gut with a painful chill. He’d forgotten what it was like having something to lose. But apparently he hadn’t forgotten how much it hurt to lose it.
Along the walk, he learned that the guard’s name was Alys, and that she wasn’t a member of Elena’s family, but was raised in a less wealthy household and working in service until she could afford her own citizenship stake. She led him down stairs and along another curved corridor tiled in faux terra‑cotta, which combined with the thicketed landscape of the walls to suggest a jungle path. At least the movement eased the ache in a knee further strained in descending the stairs.
“Your culture believes in the beneficial power of walking,” he said as they paused for Alys to consult her datacart and locate Elder Pretoria.
“Saves on chemical antidepressants,” she quipped, and frowned slightly when he didn’t laugh.
“And I would have guessed the jungle was rich in useful pharmaceuticals.” He knew he should have bitten his tongue, and couldn’t be bothered. Michelangelo was still missing, he was being kept deliberately in the dark, and she had the nerve to look disappointed at his lack of attention to her jokes.
“I believe you should discuss that with Elder Singapore,” she said coolly. “Elder Pretoria is on the porch, Miss Katherinessen. She’ll see you.”
Her pique amused him, and it might have been impolitic to let her see it, but he was beyond caring. So he nodded and smiled as he walked past her down the short corridor to the veranda, through an open archway and into the still‑warm night.
Elena waited as promised. She placed a rough pottery cup in his hand before he spoke a word. The shape clung to his fingers, and the contents perfumed the air above with the fermented tang of alcohol. He set it down without tasting it, brushing garlands off the ledge to make room, and drummed his fingers beside it.
“Katya must have checked in, mustn’t she? Before she brought the khir in for medical treatment.”
“We didn’t want to distress you with imperfect data.”
“Of course not.” The ledge was very smooth, and lattice laced with flowers and sticks of incense stretched above it to the veranda’s overhanging roof, so he had to peer through the chinks as if through a veil to see the courtyard beyond. The khir had been brought inside. Neither Katya nor any of the household staff and family members who had descended to assist her were present. “I understand that you wouldn’t want to disturb my fragile emotional equilibrium.”
The finger drumming was unlikely to convince her that he was calm. With an effort, he smoothed his hands and curled them around the base of the cup. The pottery wasn’t cool, but compared to the sun‑retained warmth of the ledge, it seemed so.
“My apologies, Miss Katherinessen. It was thoughtless.”
He licked his lips, lifted the cup, and turned back. She stood as he had left her, hands folded around a similar cup–he couldn’t be sure of the color in the dark–and her face half shadowed, half picked out in pinpricks from nebula and courtyard light filtering through the lattice. “Tell me now,” he said.
“Katya found Walter in a street about six kilometers from here. In Cascade, which is not the best neighborhood. He was wounded, unconscious, and there were signs of a fight.”
Vincent realized the cup was at his lips only when it clicked against his teeth. “What signs?”
Elena rocked back on her heels. “Blood. A great deal of it. Marks of bullet ricochets and tangler fire.”
“Bodies?”
“None.”
He closed his eyes, breathed out, and breathed in across the liquor. The sting brought tears to his eyes. “What now?”
“There may be a ransom note,” she said. “Or an extortion demand. Security directorate is investigating. A house‑to‑house search has been authorized–”
“Unacceptable.”
“Miss Katherinessen,” she said, her dignity unmoderated by the interruption, “my daughter is missing as well.”
“Yes,” he said. “You haven’t even been able to find one ‘stud male’ in a city where he can’t legally walk the streets without a woman’s permission. And I’m supposed to take your efforts to ensure Angelo’s safety seriously?”
“It’s Carnival,Miss Katherinessen. You’ve seen what the streets are like this time of year.”
“And yet nobody witnessed anything? I want to see the scene.”
“And expose yourself further?”
“You had no qualms about exposing me when I was shot at–”
“Now we do,” she said. She looked down at the surface of her beverage. He wondered what she saw reflected. “Relax,” she said. “Not only is Elder Kyoto very interested in getting Miss Kusanagi‑Jones back, but Saide Austin has become involved. And she is verywell connected. If anybody in Penthesilea can find Lesa and your partner, it’s the pair of them.”
Of course Saide Austin wants him back,he thought. It’d be a crying shame if her time bomb died on New Amazonian soil, far from the people he was meant to infect.What he said was, “I wish to return to the government center. I will feel safer there, under proper security.”
“I’ll see to it tonight,” she said. “Go make your farewells to the house, if you have any.”
He went quietly. The guard Alys was not waiting in the hall. He glanced left and right, but saw no trace. She must have expected Elder Pretoria to send for her when she was required.
Or Elena had sent him out intentionally unescorted for some purpose of her own. He paused in the hall, recalling the route back to his borrowed rooms unerringly. He could retrace it…or he could do a little unofficial wandering under the guise of being lost.
Don’t be silly,he told himself, following the corridor back the way he’d come. You’re inventing busywork to keep your brain off Michelangelo. It’s as likely an oversight; she’s a crafty old creature, but not everything is conspiracy, not even on this planet, and not even everything in Pretoria household happens to Elena’s plan.
Lesa Pretoria was proof enough of that.
He paused at the foot of the stair, one hand raised to rub at his nose, and froze that way. Of course. Elena couldn’t arrange for him to visit the scene of the kidnapping, if it were a kidnapping and not a murder–and the Christ damn this outpost of hell for its archaic technology anyway. If they could manage an engineered retrovirus, they ought to be able to swing a twelve‑hour DNA type. But she could buy Vincent a sliver of time in which to speak to Katya in private about what she’d seen. And Katya would doubtless be with the injured khir.
“House,” he asked, “which way to the infirmary?”
The ripple of brightness was expected this time, a p
attern of motion designed to catch a predator’s eye just the way light snagged on the V‑shaped track of a big fish underwater.
If he had to take a guess, he’d wager that was what Dragons ate. It made sense of the jaw full of slender, needle‑sharp back‑curved teeth, the sharply hooked talons. Following the light, he thought about that, distracted himself with images of arrowing, broad‑winged green‑and‑blue beings hauling great silver fish squirming from the protected waters of the bay.
They were far superior images to the one that persisted when he did not force himself to think of something frivolous.
The rill led him through cool rooms and several corridors, his feet passing over carpetplant and what passed for tile the way the strand of light passed over moving images of jungle understory. He memorized this route, too. It was always good to know how to get out of whatever you were getting into.
He smelled cut greenery, and then cooking, and finally the hospital reek of antiseptic, adhesive, and synthetic skin. The pale glow lingered around a closed iris. Vincent paused and rested his fingertips against the wall beside the door.
“House, open the door, please.”
It spiraled obediently wide. This was a public space, and there was no reason for House to forbid him entrance.
The murmur of voices washed out as he stepped inside. Or a voice, anyway. Katya bent over a flat‑topped table covered with layers of folded cloth, one hand on the neck of the animal she whispered to and the other on his muzzle. It looked as if the bandages had been changed.
Girl and khir were alone in the room. Katya glanced up, tensing, at the sound of the door. Walter might have lifted his head, but she stroked his neck and restrained him, and he relaxed under her hand. She also seemed to calm when she saw Vincent, but he knew it for a pretense. Her shoulders eased and her face smoothed, but no matter how softly she petted the khir’s feathers the lingering tension in her fingers propagated minute shivers across his skin.
Vincent cleared his throat. “Just how smart is a khir?”
She smiled. “Smart.”
“As smart as a human?”
“Well,” she said, stroking Walter’s feathers back along the bony ridge at the back of his skull, “not the same kind of smart. No. They don’t use tools or talk, but they understand fairly complicated instructions and they coordinate with humans and with their pack mates.”
“So they must communicate.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Pity he can’t talk,” Vincent said, sadly.
Katya colored, olive‑tan skin pinking at the cheeks. “Miss Katherinessen,” she said, “I’m sorry about Miss Kusanagi‑Jones. I want to offer my personal assurances that I and everyone in Pretoria house will do everything we can to find him and bring him home safe. Agnes is coordinating the search now, and I’ll relieve her in the morning.”
As if her words were permission, he stepped over the threshold and came fully into the room. The white tile floor was cool, even cold, shocking to feet that had already grown accustomed to carpetplant and the blood‑warmth of House’s hallways. “I shall be praying for your mother,” he said, “and her safe and timely return.”
“Thank you,” she said after a hesitation, and licked her lips before she looked up again. “Do you pray often?”
“Sometimes.”
“Ur is a Christian colony.”
“Founded by Christians. Radicals, like New Amazonia.”
She kept her eyes on the khir, as if watching him breathe. He lay quietly, the nictitating membrane closed under outer lids at half‑mast. She smoothed his feathers again. “We’re taught that Christians were among the worst oppressors of women. On Old Earth. That they held women responsible for all the sin and wickedness in the world.”
He chuckled. “Not my branch of the Church. We’re heretics.”
“Really?” She brightened as if it were a magic word. “Like Protestants?”
He shook his head and reached out slowly to lay his hand on Walter’s flank behind the bandages. The khir’s hide was soft and supple under scales like beads on an evening gown, pebbled against his fingertips. The khir sighed as another breath of tension left his muscles. Vincent’s own heart slowed, the ache across his shoulders easing in response.
“Descended, philosophically speaking, from the very first heresy of all. One that was eradicated by the Paulines about two and a half thousand years ago, for being prone to sentiments that were thought to undermine the authority of the Church.”
He had her interest. She brushed the back of his hand and he could feel her trembling, though she restrained the appearance of it well. “But was it really a…church yet?”
“There was a bishop.” She laughed, so he continued. “Who didn’t approve of their ideas, such as that the Christ might speak to anyone and not solely through the Apostles, and that God was both masculine and feminine and thus women might serve equally as well as men, and that the passion of the Christ was a physical ordeal only, and did not affect his divine essence, and so martyrdom was kind of silly. You know, the usual heresies.”
“And you believe all that?”
He smiled and turned his hand over, pressing it to hers palm to palm. “I was raised to. My mother’s philosophy is a utilitarian one. She believes the purpose of religion, or government, is to maintain the maximum number of people in the maximum possible comfort. And so it suits her to believe that what the serpent offered Eve in the garden wasn’t sin, but self‑knowledge. Enlightenment. Gnosis.”
Katya shook her head. “That’s supposed to be the story that was used to justify oppressing women.”
“But what if the snake did her a favor?”
“Then Eve’s not the villain. Your mother’s supposed to be some kind of a prophet, isn’t she? On your home world?”
“Gnostics believe that anyone can prophesy, if the spirit moves them. She is”–he shrugged–“very good at getting people to listen to her. On Ur, and elsewhere. Enough so that even Earth has to deal with her.”
She squeezed lightly before she pulled her hand away. “Okay, you said you were raised to believe that. But you didn’t answer my question.”
He grinned and let her let go. “Do you believe everything you’re taught, Miss Pretoria?”
When she paused and swallowed, it was all there in her expression, for far longer and much more plainly than she would have liked. How Lesa had missed it, Vincent couldn’t imagine.
Of course, he’d missed Michelangelo’s duplicity. And even for a Liar, that was an impressive trick. The hardest people to read were the ones one was most emotionally attached to, because one’s own projections and desires would interfere with the analysis. One would see what one wanted to see.
There was no surprise in not noticing the knife in Brutus’s hand.
Katya Pretoria stepped back, shaking filthy locks of hair out of her eyes. Flecks of blood stuck the strands together. “Of course I don’t,” she said. “Now, if you will excuse me, Miss Katherinessen, I’m going to get Walter upstairs and try for some sleep myself. I have to relieve Agnes in the morning.”
Kii watches the rust‑colored biped climb. Its heartbeat is fast, blood pressure elevated, serotonin levels depleted, blood sugar dropping, lactic acid levels high, breathing shallow. It is, in short, exhausted, hungry, and dangerously emotional.
Kii waits until it regains its temporary refuge and is alone, in what the bipeds call privacy. Then he clears the wall and appears. “Greetings, Vincent Katherinessen.”
“Kii,” it says. “I was just about to call you. I know the Consent is that you will not assist me–”
“You wish to know if Kii can locate Michelangelo Osiris Leary Kusanagi‑Jones.”
“I wish it, yes.” The biped pauses its speech, but not its motion. If anything, the short quick steps appear to Kii like a futile struggle against the inevitable edict. “And Lesa. Katya Pretoria knows what happened.”
“It shoots Kusanagi‑Jones in the back,” Kii says.
&nb
sp; The russet biped rounds on Kii’s projected image, manipulators clenching. “What?”
“Your mate is unharmed,” Kii adds speedily. “It is struck by a sedative capsule. No permanent damage inflicted. Lesa Pretoria is also uninjured, and is restrained in a tangler.”
This linear, discursive mode of communication is vastly limited and inefficient, prone to misparsing. It requires finesse to communicate accurately in this fashion. How much more elegant to present information in poem matrices, with observed, stipulated, speculated, and potential elements clearly identified and quantified by the grammar of the construct.
The Katherinessen biped sinks on the edge of the bed, elbows on its legs, manipulators that seem powerful for its size dangling between its knees, knuckles facing. “Where are they?”
Kii accesses records, flicks through House’s files. At last, reluctantly, Kii says, “They are not in range of House’s nodes.”
“They’re out of the city. In the jungle?”
“That follows as a strong potential.”
“Hell,” the biped says. “Now I have to tell Elena that her granddaughter is a traitor. I do not get paid enough for this.”
19
LESA WOKE COLD, A NOVEL EXPERIENCE IN PENTHESILEA in summer. Her hands in particular were numb (the left one beyond pins‑and‑needles and into deadness), her ankles sore, her neck cramped from lying slumped on her side. The hair that dragged through her mouth was foul with blood and dirt and the acrid bitterness of tangler solvent, and she spat and spat trying to clear it away.
She lay on an earthen floor, and she could smell the jungle. Smell it–and hear it. Night sounds, which explained why her eyes strained at darkness. The canopy filtered daylight, but blocked the Gorgon’s light almost entirely. She heard birds and insects–and a fexa’s warble, closer than she liked, even if she was lucky and there was a stout stockade between them.
She flexed and kicked but didn’t learn anything that surprised her. Her wrists were bound at the small of her back and her ankles strapped. When she lifted her head, her neck amended its status from painful to excruciating, and she fell back, trying to ease the spasm, crying between her teeth.
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